THE EYES OF THAR
By HENRY KUTTNER
She spoke in a tongue dead a thousand years,
and she had no memory for the man she faced.
Yet he had held her tightly but a few short
years before, had sworn eternal vengeance—when
she died in his arms from an assassin's wounds.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He had come back, though he knew what to expect. He had always comeback to Klanvahr, since he had been hunted out of that ancient Martianfortress so many years ago. Not often, and always warily, for therewas a price on Dantan's head, and those who governed the Dry Provinceswould have been glad to pay it. Now there was an excellent chance thatthey might pay, and soon, he thought, as he walked doggedly through thebaking stillness of the night, his ears attuned to any dangerous soundin the thin, dry air.
Even after dark it was hot here. The dead ground, parched and arid,retained the heat, releasing it slowly as the double moons—the Eyes ofThar, in Klanvahr mythology—swung across the blazing immensity of thesky. Yet Samuel Dantan came back to this desolate land as he had comebefore, drawn by love and by hatred.
The love was lost forever, but the hate could still be satiated. He hadnot yet glutted his blood-thirst. When Dantan came back to Klanvahr,men died, though if all the men of the Redhelm Tribe were slain, eventhat could not satisfy the dull ache in Dantan's heart.
Now they were hunting him.
The girl—he had not thought of her for years; he did not want toremember. He had been young when it happened. Of Earth stock, he hadduring a great Martian drought become godson to an old shaman ofKlanvahr, one of the priests who still hoarded scraps of the forgottenknowledge of the past, glorious days of Martian destiny, when brighttowers had fingered up triumphantly toward the Eyes of Thar.
Memories ... the solemn, antique dignity of the Undercities, in ruinsnow ... the wrinkled shaman, intoning his rituals ... very old books,and older stories ... raids by the Redhelm Tribe ... and a girl SamuelDantan had known. There was a raid, and the girl had died. Such thingshad happened many times before; they would happen again. But to Dantanthis one death mattered very much.
Afterward, Dantan killed, first in red fury, then with a cool, quiet,passionless satisfaction. And, since the Redhelms were well representedin the corrupt Martian government, he had become outlaw.
The girl would not have known him now. He had gone out into thespaceways, and the years had changed him. He was still thin, his eyesstill dark and opaque as shadowed tarn-water, but he was dry and sinewyand hard, moving with the trained, dangerous swiftness of the predatorhe was—and, as to morals, Dantan had none worth mentioning. He hadbroken more than ten commandments. Between the planets, and in thefar-flung worlds bordering the outer dark, there are more than ten. ButDantan had smashed them all.
In the end there was still the dull, sickening hopelessness, partloneliness, part something less definable. Hunted, he came back toKlanvahr, and when he came, men of the Redhelms died. They did not dieeasily.
But this time it was they who hunted, not he. They had cut him offfrom the aircar and they followed now like hounds upon his track. Hehad almost been disarmed in that last battle. And the Redhelms wouldnot lose the trail; they had followed signs for generations across thedying tundras of Mars.
He paused, flattening himself against an outcrop of rock, and lookedback. It was dark; the Eyes of Thar had not yet risen, and the blaze ofstarlight cast a gh